In this episode I go into details about one of the more trying months of construction and the Our Country Cottage update lets you in on the two trips I took there this week.
ITB, In The Beginning, Month 17, December
Another attempt at remembering what we had to go through to get Our Country Cottage. As I mentioned last time it seems to be getting easier. Well, this month was a ruff one.
This month started off as the last month finished, with cold temperatures and snow, lots of snow. So much snow that, just plowing the drive was starting to reveal the short comings of just using a blade.
As you plow the drive banks form on the side. You can only push the snow back so far. As you continue these banks get bigger and the drive gets narrower and narrower. It got to the point that I could see larger vehicles, like the propane truck, would start to have problems having less and less room to negotiate.
Our contractor had his own skid steer and I asked him to move the banks back for me. He and his assistant had much more experience doing this sort of thing. Well, it took his assistant about 8 hours to do it. Remember it’s a kilometer long. He kept getting stuck and the contractor had to keep going to pull him out, and they knew what they were doing! When I got the bill I realized that I could buy a tractor with a snow thrower, etc for the cost of keeping the drive clear, for a winter or two, this way.
I had been looking at getting a tractor for cutting the grass anyways. The skid steer was great for ruff stuff but would tear up the ground otherwise and the only mower I had was a flail mower. You can take down 3 inch trees with it but is far from being a finish mower. I had my eye on a sub compact tractor. You might have seen the commercials. Just hop on the tractor and drive over the mower and it auto connects. It makes it look real easy to reconfigure the unit as required. I figured a snow thrower, a rear blade, a finish mower, a couple of extras and I should be good. I placed my order. More to come later in this podcast.
From the last visit to Our Country Cottage last month to the first visit this month saw 20% of the 1000 gallon propane tank used. By the middle of the month I had to call for a fill up. And to make it worse, propane was seeing record high prices.
A little info on propane tanks. When they fill them they only fill them to 80% capacity to allow for expansion. Also that 80% it temperature corrected. There is a curve on the tank gauge that shows how much to put in at what temperatures. The tank gauge also has a red band from 0 to 25%. I was told to call them, for fill up, once in the red
Anyway, the first visit of the month had the solar panels mounted, not aligned yet, but mounted and there had been a vent installed in the battery room. The vent pipe was connected to that large battery box, I was telling you about last podcast, with a fan that would turn on automatically to vent the batteries when they charged. The battery box is sealed, so as long as the lids are closed and latched, there is no gas build up, in the battery room. Gases produced by lead acid batteries can be dangerous for several reasons and will be a topic in a future podcast along with the care and handling of these beasts.
Painting had carried on with most of the walls covered. As I had hoped, the color was far from jarring as it was when just the boarders were done. It was looking quite cozy.
Before our next visit we had been informed that out fridge had arrived from the states and was waiting to be picked up at the shipping depot, north of the city. As we had other, somewhat large items to take up to Our Country Construction project, I took the opportunity to rent a truck, the smallest one we could get, with a ramp out the back. It was 14 feet long and the rental was for 3 days.
Monday, we picked up the truck and took it back to our city home where we loaded up the items we wanted to take up to the country.
Tuesday, turned out to be a snowy, windy, stormy day. Not the type of day I would be driving if I didn’t have to, let alone driving a rental truck with questionable ability. I remember getting in the cab and pressing the gas, just to hear the wheel, yes wheel singular, no posi-lock four wheel drive here, spin. I crept out on to the road with some trepidation. My partner was following behind in our vehicle, giving me a false sense of security. We turned north.
These shipping depots are put out in the sticks and not easy to find, under best of conditions. I was getting used to the truck and my back up was behind me, when we found the place. Snow, windswept and desolate. We weren’t sure it was even open, but we found the front door, went inside and presented the paperwork. We were told to go round the side and back up the ramp, as there would be someone there clearing the snow. I had the feeling we were the first people to show up that day.
As we came around the building we could see a lone snow shoveler trying to clean the ramp, the long ramp. I tried backing up the ramp but the sophisticated traction control of the rental truck failed. Yeah right. There was some recollection of my partner trying to reverse the truck while I helped to shovel, push etc.
Nope, there was just not enough traction to make it up the grade.
I suggested trying to use one of the regular loading bay doors, the ones that are about 3 feet high. There was little snow in front of one of them, for some reason, and a level surface to back over. So I backed the truck up to it, leaving enough room to pull out the truck ramp, and after some adjustments, used it as a bridge from the loading platform to the truck. The loading of the fridge was somewhat anti climactic. With fridge securely strapped in place it was back to the city.
We had one more pick up to make. The futons to be used in the back bedrooms were also ready. The snow and wind hadn’t let up at all but my partner had had enough and once in town headed home, leaving me to collect said futons by myself. It was in the city limits, after all. In an older part of the city with small, narrow side roads and alley ways.
At the futon place I was told to back the truck up to the veranda in the small parking area in the rear, down the alley a bit. There is some recollection of blocking traffic while setting up to back into the alley but it wasn’t on my list of concerns, at the time. I still don’t know how I got that truck positioned the way I did. Dumb luck I guess. Getting the futon frames in was no problem but the extra thick mattresses were a handful. I can feel the pounding headache I had back then as I tell you now. Long story a little shorter, I got it loaded with the help of the futon staff and got home just before the sun went down.
Wednesday, my partner was still under the weather so I headed off to Our Country Cottage solo. The snow had stopped but it was still cold and blowing. When I got there, there were several trucks parked. The contractor, his assistant and the solar power system crew.
As I said, the wind was still blowing and the solar power crew were about to put the solar collectors on the roof. A singe ladder had been extended and was leaning against the peak of the roof, the highest part of the cottage. The solar collector were about 8 feet tall and 3 to 4 feet wide. The crew were about to hand hoist them up the ladder, one at a time and bolt them to the frame work that was already in place. One good gust, at the wrong time, and it would have been all over, even though the crew was very professional with safety harnesses etc. And professional they were. The panels were installed without a hitch.
Meanwhile, inside, I found our contractor in the master bed room finishing off the window seat. I had noticed that the window seat, that runs the full length of the window, in the living room, was already in place. Medicine cabinets were ready to be installed in their respective bathrooms.
Our contractor and his assistant helped me unload the rental truck into the garage. OK, they did it and I watched. I did the small stuff. Then I was off, back to the city to get the rental back in time. The contract said, I got there at 5:41pm. Keep the paperwork and emails folks.
That next trip up To Our Country Cottage, about a week later, had me dropping in to the tractor dealer. We had one in the city but I wanted to deal with one that was as close as possible to the cottage. Also a dealer out in the country would be a bit more in tune with what is required in the country.
The tractor was ready to go and the purpose of the visit, to the dealer, was to drop off the final payment and guide the delivery guy to the cottage, if required. It was while I was waiting for the tractor to be loaded onto the delivery truck with its extras that I found out the easy connect thing that the mower has, the just drive over it and it hooks up and works, doesn’t apply to the snow thrower. In fact a major bit of configuring has to take place to switch between the snow thrower and mower. The dealer rattled off what needed to happen ending off with, “Give me a call when you are ready to switch and I’ll come out to show you what to do.” And when the time came I did, and, he did. For more details stay tuned for future podcasts.
So the tractor and bits got loaded and off to Our Country Cottage we went. When we arrived I noticed that the solar panels were now pointing in the right direction. If I remember correctly the driver asked me if I wanted to drive the tractor off the truck myself. Not having ever driven something like that I decided, backing it off the truck shouldn’t be my first time, so he did it while I watched. After he left I was more than happy to try it out on level ground and I practiced a bit before putting it in the garage.
Checking progress inside I found sinks and taps in place. Steps to the tub in the en suite bathroom were ruffed in. Remember the tub was elevated to allow for a view, whilst soaking.
Also, remember there was a four inch gap between the masonry heater and the wall, well that gap now has a black grate encircling it. This prevents most objects from falling back there. There are magnetically latched access flaps at the bottom to allow cleaning or retrieving dropped items.
I can now verify that a set of wooden steps is/are in place, going from the pantry, to the crawl space.
Three days later and it was a cold grey day. No one was on site. The generator was running. It had 477 hours on it. Starting to climb fast. Going inside I found that they had cleaned up the place. The only things out of place was cardboard covering the counter tops and some protective plastic on the main beam. More painting had been done. About a half a dozen doors were standing in the sun room, in the process of being finished. The loft over the garage was dry walled, mudded and taped. Not sure when that happened. But it was ready for me to finish at a later date.
Our next visit was with the whole family. No one was working, because of the holidays, so we had the place to ourselves. The sun was shining, the weather was gorgeous but still cold, with a lot of snow on the ground. I fired up the tractor and tied the toboggan, the kids had given us as a present, to the back, and gave toboggan rides up and down the drive. The kids even tried out driving the tractor. Lots of fun was had by all.
I noticed that, even with the sun shining brightly, there was no solar charging.
Three days go by before my next visit to see if I could figure out the solar power system. It was cloudy, but just a bit overcast. When I arrive, it appears the solar power was dead. There wasn’t even a solar bar on the display, just blank as if there were never any panels to begin with. Both charge controllers were dead as well, with their displays blank.
A little looking around and I found a tripped breaker in the solar/inverter/control unit. When I reset it everything came back to life. The charge controllers displays came up and the solar power indicator on the remote panel appeared again. This wouldn’t be the last time this breaker gave us grief.
Anyway, the batteries were now charging by the panels again. Handy tip, take pics of your breaker panels, when everything is working and if you think of it, when things aren’t. It makes a great reference when standing in front of them trying to figure out which ones were on or not esp if you use your phone camera.
So we are at the end of month 17 in the cold and snow. The generator now has 541 hours on it and I am trying to figure out the solar power system.
I am going to wrap this podcast up with “Our Country Cottage “ update. I went up twice this week.
I’ll tell you about my visit as it happened. I collected the SD cards from the two trail cams came down the drive. Once at the cottage I did the third. Basically, at the trail cams I just check to make sure the batteries were ok, they all use 8 AA batteries each and the trail cam display gives a percentage reading of what is left in the batteries , and I swap the SD card with an empty one. I have 2 SD cards per trail cam, one in the cam and one I take home, download the pics and clean ready for next time.
I then topped up the batteries in the battery room. Inside I collected the data from the remote display unit for the solar power. It also has an SD card in it that I swap with an empty one.
Looking at my calendar log on the table I realize that the data loggers need to be done. The way I have them set up is that they take temperature readings every minute, I think. This means they can hold about 55 days worth of data before getting full. When I collect the data I mark on the calendar when they are next due. I used to go by memory but I would always end up going over and loosing info. These data loggers, use internal memory, and have to be downloaded directly on to a computer via USB. They also are powered by, a special, lithium ½ aa battery. I have four loggers and it takes about a half hour or so.
I have one more trail cam to do. It’s a bit in the bush and at this time of year, spring, things are starting to wake up, things I really don’t want to run into. So I load a bear banger and grab a can of bear spray and head off with an empty SD card, spare batteries etc.
If you are wondering, a bear banger is a device that makes noise to scare off animals. The one I have is the size of a pen, it even has a pen clip on it. The firing mechanism is a spring loaded tab you pull back and let go. There is a loading position for the tab that you cock the unit, screw in a bear banger cartridge and you are ready. When you use it, you pull the tab all the way back and let it go. There is a bang and an inner cartridge is propelled about 100 or so feet into the air where a much louder bang takes place. Couple of cautions. Open your mouth a bit when you do this to prevent hearing damage and point the unit straight up, not at the animal or in its direction. If you do point it at the animal the inner cartridge can be propelled past you target and create a loud bang behind it, driving the animal toward you. Not the desired effect.
SD card swapped with no issues and the batteries were good. No bangers or spray required.
Back in the city I realized that one of the trail cams dates were all screwed up. I guess there was a time when the batteries died and it reset.
My second trip to our country cottage was much more relaxed. I had a bit of work to do on our vehicle and that trail camera to reset.
All went well. Oh I have called the plumber to get ready to fix those broken toilets and help me get water back into Our Country Cottage.
And that’s all I have to report at this time,
So…
Next podcast, Episode#17 ITB “In The Beginning” month 18 and we might have some progress to report on the water situation.
For pictures and more info, you can visit our website at www.ourcountrycottageanarrative.com
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Till next time have a good one.